


in the gardens i get lost (that is unless i'm getting found)

by owlinaminor



Series: author's favorites [9]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Flowers, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, POV Outsider, cool grandmothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 15:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6913018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tendou Satori’s cause of death: Ushijima Wakatoshi in the garden with his shirt off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the gardens i get lost (that is unless i'm getting found)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohirareon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohirareon/gifts).



> "betsy, wasn't the _last_ ushiten fic you wrote set in a garden?" you might ask. "shhh," i reply. "shhhhh."
> 
> this fic is in honor of tendou's birthday (hbd to my favorite volleyball weeb), but it's also dedicated to [megan](https://twitter.com/hotdadtrinity), who reminds me why i love ushiten on a daily basis. (and she did some great art to go with the fic! you'll find it embedded at the end.)
> 
> thanks also go to [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis) for beta-ing and matoi ryuko for being her incredible self. (tendou's grandmother is named after her in this fic because i watched all of kill la kill this past week and, basically, ryuko could kick my ass and i would thank her.)
> 
> title is from [ne me quitte pas by regina spektor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HbQFb9GR5E).

There is a knock on Tendou Ryuko’s door.

Or, three knocks, to be precise – three quiet raps, half-hesitant, like the first woodpecker of the morning, not quite sure whether now is the right time to begin waking the world.

Tendou Ryuko glances up from the mostly-eaten omelette on her blue China plate and calls out, “Coming!”  She grabs her favorite gray sweater and throws it around her shoulders as she hobbles to the door, putting one hand on the wall for support.

When she opens the door, she finds a tall boy with dark hair falling in his eyes and a serious expression, as though he’s never been told that smiling is good for the temperament.  When he sees her, he bows low at the waist.

“I’m Ushijima Wakatoshi,” he says, then straightens.  “You’re Tendou Ryuko-san, correct?”

Ryuko smiles.  Something about him – his formality, his serious demeanor, the way he pronounces _correct_ , every syllable perfectly in place – is oddly endearing.

“I am,” she says.

Wakatoshi nods, then replies, “Tamazake-san told me you needed help with your garden.”

“That’s true,” Ryuko tells him, crossing her arms over her chest.  “My back is old and creaky, and my limbs are not the young saplings they used to be.  I’d been trying for some time –”   _with little success,_ she adds mentally, “– to convince my grandchildren to help me out, until Tamazake mentioned that you’d done some yard work for her.”

“I mowed her yard, pruned her bushes, and brought her perennials back to life,” Wakatoshi recites, as though counting off items on his fingers.  “I also helped her husband clean the gutters, and –”

“Yes, she recommended you highly,” Ryuko interrupts - she’s heard all she needs to hear.  “She said you were the best worker she’d ever seen.”

“Oh.”  Upon hearing the praise, the boy smiles – the slightest, proudest smile, like a tiny sliver of moon able to light up the whole night sky.

It’s a good look on him, Ryuko thinks.

“I have several tasks for you,” she says.  “Could take you all morning, could take you into the afternoon.  I’ll pay you a thousand yen an hour, plus lunch and some of my famous green tea.  How does that sound?”

Wakatoshi nods.  “That sounds great, Tendou-san.”

“Excellent.”  She turns around and heads inside.  “Follow me.”

* * *

After barely five minutes of explanation (tools are in the shed, bag of fertilizer is on the porch, you have to really put your back into twisting that spigot otherwise it’ll take decades for the hose to turn on), the boy is ready to go.  He bows to Ryuko once more, then pulls out a pair of gardening gloves – his own, worn and faded with loving use – and gets to work.

Ryuko sets about her morning chores: moving her breakfast plate and frying pan to the sink, sweeping the dust off the faded green porch, putting the kettle on for tea.  Then, she picks out a biography of an old poet from her stack of library books and settles down in her creaky wooden rocking chair to keep an eye on her new gardener.  Not that he particularly needs keeping an eye on, mind – as she watches, he finishes weeding her small garden, adds a layer of fertilizer, and waters her prize sunflowers as though he was born for the task.

Ryuko’s yard isn’t particularly impressive, she knows.  It’s barely big enough to be called a yard, really – just a few square meters of flowers and herbs, a patch of grass, and an old oak with a swing dangling down.  Her husband installed that swing years ago, for their kids to play in – now, her grandkids like to come by and dare each other to get as high as they can, then leap off at the top. She should probably be afraid that they’ll fall and hurt themselves – or, worse, break the swing – but she never is.  The ancestors have looked after her garden for almost forty years, now. There’s no reason why they won’t continue looking after it for forty more.

Yes, it isn’t a particularly impressive backyard, but it’s the backyard where her children and grandchildren have played, the backyard where she and her husband were married decades ago, the backyard where she raised a family.  It’s her backyard, her garden - her pride.  And when the sun rises high above the flowers, bringing out the reds and golds and violets of the flowers like a sculptor forging  fire out of stone, she thinks this garden might be the most beautiful thing she’s ever given life.

Wakatoshi, with his careful hands and steady movements, seems to understand.  Ryuko likes him, she decides, watching him coax her lawnmower’s old engine to ignite and begin tackling her plot of grass.  He’s quiet, and he does what he’s asked without cajoling or complaining, and he respects her flowers.  Nothing like her grandchildren.

Speak of the devil – for the second time that morning, there’s a knock on Ryuko’s door.  Or, fourteen knocks, to be precise.  In quick succession and increasing dynamic.

“Oba-san!” calls a voice from the direction of the knocks.  “Oba-san, are you home?”

Ryuko sighs, stands up slowly, cracks her back, and heads to the front door.  She opens it to find her eldest grandson, Satori, bouncing on his toes as though he’s being pulled into the air by balloons.

“Oba-san!” he repeats, a grin coming over his face.  “Good morning!  Ka-san sent over some of those pastries you like, and a painting Ran did in school yesterday!  It’s of the flowers in your garden!”

“Good morning, Satori,” Ryuko says, her calm practiced after years of challenging babysitting.  “That’s very kind of your mother.  May I see the paint –”

But before she can finish the question, Satori has already torn past her, heading straight for the backyard.

“I’m gonna play on the swing!” he shouts.  (Her other, younger grandchildren outgrew that thing years ago, but Satori still spends hours on it each time he comes over.  He must really be trying the ancestors’ patience.)  She follows, hoping he had the foresight to leave the pastries and painting in the kitchen.

* * *

As it turns out, the pastries and painting are both safe – abandoned on a side table in the living room. Ryuko finds Satori standing in front of the screen door to the backyard, mouth agape.  She takes a moment to appreciate the rare silence before questioning it.

“Satori?  What’s wrong?”

Satori raises one hand, wrist shaking, to point at the boy in the garden.  Wakatoshi is just starting his third row.  He’s clearly very skilled with a lawnmower – his lines in the grass are straight, as though drawn with a ruler.

“Ushijima Wakatoshi!” Satori exclaims.

At the mention of his name, Wakatoshi looks up.  He notices Satori – and his expression changes, for the tiniest fraction of a second, to a smile.  He lifts one hand to wave.

Satori appears to have stopped breathing.

Ryuko watches the action with no small amount of curiosity.

Wakatoshi resumes mowing, finishing the line and starting a new one as though nothing has changed.  Satori, after a few seconds of recovery, turns to his grandmother with eyes so wide she’s worried they’ll pop straight out of his head.

“ _Oba-san_ ,” he says in an urgent whisper.

“ _Yes,_ ” she replies in kind.

“ _What is Ushijima Wakatoshi doing in your backyard with his shirt off.”_

Shirt off?  Ryuko turns back to the gardener, and he does appear to have discarded his shirt.  He must’ve decided to shed a layer.  She can’t blame him – gardening is rather hard work in hot weather like this.  Her grandson appears to have a much less logical view of the situation.

“I hired him to help me with my garden,” she tells Satori.  “Because, you know, a _certain grandson_ of mine never offered.”

“I would’ve offered if I knew _this_ was going to happen,” Satori squeaks, staring at Wakatoshi as though the answers to his next five exams are written upon the boy’s chest.  (Ryuko is starting to worry about him.)

“Do you know him?” she asks.

“ _Know_ him?!”  Satori whirls to look at her, then quickly reevaulates his actions and turns back to the view of the yard and its occupant.  “Oba-san!  Haven’t you been to _any_ of my volleyball games?”

Ryuko doesn’t understand, at first, what connection Satori’s volleyball games have to the spectacle currently taking place in her home.  But then, she thinks back – to packed stadium stands, loud cheers of _Shiratorizawa_ , and a player who could spike through any block, dominating any team he faced.  It’s hard to reconcile that powerful wing spiker with the boy who’s currently carefully mowing her garden in parallel lines, but the resemblance is there.

“You’re on the same volleyball team,” she answers Satori.

He nods.  “And now he’s in your _garden._ ”

He says this as though it’s some kind of crime.  She’s starting to gain some inclination as to why, but she has better things to do than watch her grandson ogle her new gardener.

“That he is,” she says.  And with that, she pushes open the sliding door, steps onto the porch, and picks back up her book.

* * *

Wakatoshi stays for lunch.

He finishes mowing, tidies up her hedges with some expert pruning, and cleans up all of his tools just as the sun is reaching its zenith – all of this seemingly impervious to the unblinking gaze of Ryuko’s eldest grandson, who watches from the living room for at least half an hour before pulling out a volume of Shonen Jump and joining her on the porch.  Satori is oddly quiet, his normal idle chatter seemingly laid low by the sight of his teammate doing yardwork.  But when lunch rolls around, he makes a full recovery over Ryuko’s onigiri.

“I didn’t know you did yardwork, Wakatoshi-kun!” Satori says, leaning over the table to poke the other boy in the chest.  “Is it for extra cash, Wakatoshi-kun?  Do you make a lot, Wakatoshi-kun?  Will you be able to buy all the kouhai popsicles after practice, Wakatoshi-kun?”

“I do, no, not really, and no,” Wakatoshi answers, reaching to take a second helping.

“Then why do you do it?” Satori stares at his friend, head cocked to one side.

Wakatoshi shrugs.  “I like gardening.  It’s nice.”

Satori considers this answer for a moment, then says, “Okay.  Do you like my grandmother?”

Wakatoshi looks from Satori to Ryuko, then back to Satori, and shrugs again.  “She’s nice.”

Ryuko raises one eyebrow.  Neither of them pays attention to her.

Satori grins.  “Do you like my grandmother’s _rope swing_?”

“I haven’t tried it.”

“You haven’t _tried_ it?” Satori repeats, incredulous.

“I didn’t get a chance.”

“You didn’t get a – _that’s it._  Come on!”

Satori erupts out of his chair, leaving his plate mostly clear – surprising, although it shouldn’t be; his appetite never ceases to amaze Ryuko – and practically sprints out into the backyard.  Wakatoshi observes for a moment, then follows.

Ryuko watches as Satori points Wakatoshi to the swing and instructs him in the correct way to hold on to the chain.  The boy doesn’t seem particularly enthusiastic, but he’s going along with it, letting Satori direct him like a large, stony-faced rag doll.  Once Wakatoshi is arranged on the swing to Satori’s satisfaction, Satori starts to push.  Within a few swings, the boy is high up in the air, reaching almost parallel to the ground.  At Satori’s insistence, he jumps – soars through the air like some kind of great eagle – and lands on his feet, arms outstretched.

“Did you like it?” Satori asks, hurrying over towards him.  “Cool, right?  You feel like you’re flying, right?”

In answer, Wakatoshi falls on his back in the grass.  When Ryuko stands and approaches the window to check that he’s alright, she sees that tiny smile on his face.

For the first time, she wishes, that she had one of those fancy camera phones her daughter’s been threatening to buy her handy. She wants to take a picture of Satori’s shocked face.

* * *

After that, Ryuko’s Saturday visitors become a regular occurrence.

She tells Wakatoshi to come back in two weeks and, two weeks later, almost exactly the same thing happens: Satori arrives partway through the morning, discovers his teammate in the midst of yardwork, and stands transfixed for a while before convincing him to toss around an old volleyball Ryuko keeps in the shed.  Two weeks after that, there’s another repeat performance, this time ending in a game of badminton.  Two weeks after that, they figure out how to set up a sprinkler system.  Two weeks after that, Ryuko tells Wakatoshi that he might as well just stay for dinner.

The two boys fall into a kind of rhythm.  Wakatoshi weeds the flowerbed, Satori talks to him about some new anime he’s been watching.  Wakatoshi waters the bushes, Satori tries to convince him to spray him with the hose.  Wakatoshi mows the lawn, Satori tosses a volleyball across his path, then sprints after it as fast as he can.  Wakatoshi stays for dinner, Satori convinces him to stay for hours afterward.  They take turns pushing each other on the swing, watch movies in her living room, and sometimes just toss a ball around, starting volleys that continue for longer than Ryuko thought possible.  (Their record is fifty-six minutes - she timed them, once.)

One night, they somehow manage to climb atop her house’s sloping tile roof and sit looking up at the stars.  She sticks her head out of the window, thinking it’s probably her responsibility to yell at them to get down - but then, Satori is pointing out constellations, making up names for the ones he can’t remember, and Wakatoshi is watching him as though he’s a star all his own, and.  Well.  She doesn’t have the heart to scold them.

Besides, there’s no chance they’ll fall.  She’s not quite sure when Wakatoshi became part of her family, but she knows the ancestors would protect him as if he was one of their own.

* * *

And then, one morning, Wakatoshi arrives early.

Ryuko hears three knocks – quiet raps, half-hesitant, like the first woodpecker of the morning, then opens the door to a young man in a light golden shirt that brings out the light in his chestnut-brown eyes.  There’s something different about him this morning, she thinks.  Something polished, as though he washed his face an extra time, or took extra care when combing his hair.  Something nervous.

“Good morning, Wakatoshi,” she says.  “What can I do for you?”

“Tendou-san.”  The boy bows low at the waist, then straightens, looks at her with a determined glint in his eye.  She recognizes, for the first time, the spiker she’s seen at matches – a player who knows what he wants and is determined to get it at all costs.  “I would like to take a few of your sunflowers.”

Ryuko considers him – this strange, wonderful boy, with his straightforward speech, his wholehearted determination, his hidden gentleness.  He’s not unlike one of the flowers he’s so skilled at tending, she thinks.  It takes effort to cultivate a sunflower – the correct conditions, the best nutrients, the dedication to keep weeding and watering. But if everything goes right, that flower will burst up into the sky, bright and beautiful as the sun for which it was named.

“Why?” she asks.

Wakatoshi startles, blinking at her with wide brown eyes.  “Why what?”

“Why do you want a few of my sunflowers?”

“To give them to Satori,” he answers without hesitation.

Ryuko smiles and opens the door to let him in.

She follows as he heads for the backyard, determined and purposeful, then watches as he stands in front of the garden, examining each sunflower as though choosing the best paintbrush for the finishing touches of a grand masterpiece.  At once point, a monarch butterfly flutters down to alight on his nose - maybe confusing him for a tree, maybe telling him to hurry it up already - but he remains nonplussed.

Finally, after long minutes of silence, Wakatoshi pulls a pair of clippers out of his jeans’ pocket and clips five flowers, one by one.

“You know, you could take your shirt off,” Ryuko suggests as he rearranges the flowers in his hands.  “That might help.”

Wakatoshi just looks at her.

Ryuko stifles a laugh.  “Never mind.”

* * *

Ryuko stands in her bedroom with the door cracked open to watch the scene unfold.

She hears Satori run up the front steps, then bang on the door, impatient as always.  She hears Wakatoshi’s steady footsteps as he approaches, the moment of hesitation just before he turns the doorknob.  She hears the creak as the old door slowly swings open, the gasp in Satori’s voice when he sees his gift.  

She watches Wakatoshi lead Satori through the house, the same old corridor painted in new colors.  She watches the slide of the screen door, the two boys stepping out into the sunlit garden.  She watches Wakatoshi’s lips move in a confession simple and direct as his offer to help with her garden.

She hears Satori’s whoop of joy - echoing through the morning, clear and bright as the song of a bird celebrating the coming spring.

But she closes her door and opens her book when they start to kiss.  Some things, she thinks, her grandson would probably prefer kept secret.

**Author's Note:**

> talk ushiten to me - [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](http://officialyachihitoka.tumblr.com/)


End file.
